


A Home, Maybe

by manhattan



Category: Pokemon Colosseum & XD
Genre: Desert, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Open to Interpretation, POV Female Character, Teenagers, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 08:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13431186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manhattan/pseuds/manhattan
Summary: The desert was a tortuous scenery, interesting only the first couple of times they’d crossed it.If Rui had to figure out ways to distract herself, then Wes had been the very first one.





	A Home, Maybe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TSwiftEliot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSwiftEliot/gifts).



> i hope i did this prompt justice!! i love this game and these two kids, and i hope you like it too!
> 
> Prompt: Rui &/ Wes - I imagine they have a lot of room for introspection while crossing the desert on a motorcycle; they're close for long stretches of time but can't hold a conversation. It's a good opportunity to have them think about each other.

 

**_i._**

She had never ridden anything like this—but that was obvious, wasn’t it? In Agate, you didn’t have to go anywhere in a vehicle, much less a shifty-looking motorcycle.

The sand hissed like a burning kettle whenever it caught in the tires and got projected against the side of her cart. _Sure is an aggressive sound for a bunch of rock crumbs_ , Rui thought, hating that she startled every time it happened. Hating that she didn’t know whether he was doing it on purpose, just because. The sidecar was lower to the ground, though; maybe Wes didn’t notice. Because, well …

Wes didn’t seem to want to notice much about her.

Wes hadn’t asked about the way she’d held onto the increasingly warmer walls of the sidecar with shaking hands and knees. He’d only said two or three words so far, all of them affirmatives or negatives, and ugh! Wes barely even looked at her, or at least he kept his face forward, and his glasses on.

Perhaps, she hoped for some reason, perhaps he glanced out of the corner of his eye? And would it matter? It didn’t. Did it? No, it didn’t!

She’d been the one to ask him for help. He was giving it. That was enough, and more than some people were willing to do.

Rui leaned back very slightly, angling her face away from the harsh sunlight, and wondered. The focus in him was just as impressive as the heat of the desert. Such focus, in fact, that he didn’t even bother to notice her gaze. And it didn’t annoy her, not really, but it made her a little uneasy.

She closed her eyes and thought of Agate’s cool breeze, of the sound of spring water, of how her grandparents’ hands were always so warm. And then she thought of dark gloves around handlebars, the dry smell of the desert, and gave up; looked at him again, all the way to the gas stand. For once, not really caring what that said of her.

 

 

 

**_vi._ **

The desert was a tortuous scenery—interesting only the first couple of times they’d crossed it—and if she had to figure out ways to distract herself, then Wes had been the very first one. He was there, and he was interesting. He was _interesting_ , especially for a girl who’d been raised in an aging natural paradise.

Wes was polished surface and bike steam and steel-toed boots; the only thing she recognized in him was his silence, because Agate had been filled with that too. Calm, serene. A home, maybe. Maybe.

But the sun was setting, a blend of vermillion and tangerine behind their backs as they trudged on toward the station on the outskirts.

Nothing, she thought, nothing like the pale colors of a misty mountain sundown, darkening so softly you barely even noticed. No, nothing like that. Ahead was only blackened blue, a blanket of stars, and the chill she had yet to grow used to. As bitter a sight as it was sweet, and Rui finally looked at the sunlight on his left arm, a squiggly red line that ducked into the grooves of the snag machine.

The very first time he looked anything other than provocatively sly, and she couldn’t find it in herself to look at him. Really look; really, really, really _look_!  To be shameless and up-front like she usually was. No, now she stole quick glances and averted her eyes with each and every one of his movements.

Was he really … Had he really been the best out of a group of crooks? And now, was he on the run, or on the hunt? Or just suffering through her requests? She’d believed him to be a good person, her prince in shining armor. And, well, hadn’t he been? Did the before matter? Everyone was capable of change.

The gas stand rolled into sight as Wes drove around a dwindling dune. Rui looked away again, biting into the inside of her cheek.

The sunlight was truly gone now, as he clicked the motorcycle off. The rumbling and the whistling wind were replaced by a quiet whoosh of a breeze, and the faraway jazz of the gas stand’s crackling speakers.

Rui trailed after Wes, wondering if, thinking of whys, and then only opened her mouth to ask for french fries and a strawberry shake. And Wes, as always, was quiet, asking for his usual menu with a single crooked finger.

But the angle of his shoulders was a smoother line today, as he leant into the counter and looked out the windows of the diner. It had been so since she’d said she thought him a good person.

Rui was a perceptive girl. Perceptive enough to realize she was staring, and that Wes—for once—wasn’t as distracted as when he drove. So she stared at the television instead, carefully not bumping her feet into his and wondering why she even bothered. Steel-toed boots were made for the express purpose of not feeling anything, after all, not a single thing! Even if she’d wanted to step on his toes, well—

Her face went hot, and stayed so until the stand’s owner slid their plates across the counter. Perhaps ... perhaps she’d benefit from buying herself a pair, too. Even if they didn’t match at all with the rest of her outfit.

 

 

 

**_xii._ **

Okay, so maybe there was something comforting about the endless space of the desert. The heat and the wind were not, but the space, oh, the space was something else!

With every single squeaky, one-person elevator they’d had to take at the Cipher building, Rui found herself thinking of the wide expanse of the sky, and the lull of the bike when it climbed over a dune. Of the occasional withered oasis they sometimes found, or an abandoned well with water still clinging onto its walls.

A part of her worried at this wanderlust; Rui liked the damp feeling of dew between fingers, not the crunch of sand under the heel of a boot. Wes was the one at ease in hazardous environments, from Pyrite’s battle-filled alleys to the Under’s thick, heavy air. … Right?

Rui folded her jacket under her arm and propped it against the scalding wall of the sidecar. Threw her sunscreen-sticky legs over it in a practiced move, opening Wes’ PDA over her face for some shade and for the dull yellow of the map app. Useless, since Wes knew the desert better than anyone else, but it gave her something else to focus on.

Lately, she’d been … Well, if Rui was any good at art, she would’ve been able to draw a portrait of Wes without even looking at him. She wondered if he knew, and if it had been why he hadn’t fussed when she asked him for suggestions:

“Hey, Wes,” she’d said, as they made way for his parked bike, “what do you do for fun? Like, when you’re waiting, or, y’know.”

He hadn’t answered, unsurprisingly, but the corners of his mouth twitched. His hand had gone into the inside pocket of his jacket, and he’d handed his PDA to her. Their fingers had touched, or maybe Rui had made them touch.

Rui angled his PDA until the screen was a makeshift mirror. Over her shoulder, Wes was a blurry gathering of dark colors and light hair. The map was an overlay of markers and lines, settling onto the angle of Wes’ body, his hands, his knees. Agate’s marker, emerald-green, placed at the line of his jaw, then over his eye when Rui shifted, squinting.

And then his face turned to the side, his glasses flashing white and sudden, and Rui’s face went hot under his eyes first, his smirk later. The PDA fell from her shocked hands, smacked her right in the bridge of her nose and clattered over her legs, into the floor of the sidecar.

She didn’t hear over the wind, and she didn’t dare look over her shoulder as she lunged for the fallen machine, but she was sure he’d chuckled. So, incensed by embarrassment at being caught, she didn’t look at him again.

(Stomach sizzling with pity over not hearing the pitch his voice made when he laughed, she wondered what could make it happen again, apart of personal injury.)

 

 

 

**_xix._ **

The sun struck hard across her clothed shoulders, melting Rui down in sweat and flushed skin.

The smell of sunscreen, now a necessity, rivaled the stench of gas, both of them fleeting and small in the wind. Sometimes, she would try to take big gulps of desert air before the bike curved around a dune and the frontal exhaust pipes heaved and sputtered into the air, but it was still a hit or miss activity. She was getting better at it, though, and was sure it would be as natural as blinking, one day.

Lungs full, Rui huddled closer to the metal and looked at Wes. His back was straight, though his shoulders hunched whenever the bike jumped, and his glasses were shining like a mirror in the sun. The endless yellow of the sand was there like it had always meant to be, as was the pale color of the noon sky, and Rui wondered what it would be like to see herself in that polished surface.

She’d taken hold of his motorcycle’s side-view mirrors to check her hair, before. Wes hadn’t cared (had barely even noticed), so it had become a habit, to hop out of the sidecar and pat down her unruly hair with one hand, while the other held the side mirror in place. At those times, Wes would turn away and fiddle with his PDA, until Rui stepped neatly in the space beside his.

But the glasses. To take them off of his head when he didn’t expect her to, and put them on herself? To pull him down to her eye-level and seeing the shade of her red hair just there? Or to push them back into the sandy shade of his, and seeing herself in his eyes. Would they widen in surprise, or remain in lidded apathy? Or even closed, and nearer, nearer—

Rui suddenly wanted to bury her face into her knees, but one long-lasting chin bruise after a hard swerve of the bike had taught her better than that. As had the faint amusement in Wes’ face when it had happened. She stared at him instead, red-faced, as the desert let them through. In her hands, the screen of his PDA went dark with inactivity.

The wind was loud, that day, as was the engine, and forced unto them the usual silence. Rui wondered if the otherwise would make a difference, and tried to imagine the weight of metal on the bridge of her nose. Or the warmth of chapped lips and gloved fingers.

If he asked about her face, she would say: sunburn. But, upon arriving in Pyrite, Wes didn’t. He looked at her as she fixed her hair, though. He looked, for the first time. Or just the first time she realized.

 

 

 

**_xxvii._ **

After everything was said and done, and the stadium was finally quiet, Rui reached out for Wes’ hand. In the shade of the building, his motorcycle was cool metal, noticeable even through the denim of her skirt. Twenty-six rides, mapping out Orre from tip to toe, and now it was over.

In the distance, the wind was blowing, a low hum only broken by the crackling sound of the nearby tumbleweeds. One rolled across the tip of her shoe, so light Rui didn’t even feel it, lack of steel-toed boots notwithstanding.

“So,” Rui said, and her eyes were the only damp thing for miles, as she forced herself to look at him. “I guess this is it, huh? We’ve made a good team, you and I.”

Cipher’s boss in chains, dark expressions like the pokémon they’d hurt, and Wes—at the center of it all, like always—grinning from ear to ear, glasses flashing under the spotlights. Unrepentant, smug, skilled. The culmination of the facets she’d uncovered during their travels, laid bare under the audience’s scrutiny, and she’d felt … like something had been taken from her.

“I wonder what’ll happen, after all this,” she went on, needing to fill the silence. “I mean, I’m sure Chief Sherles will take care of it everyone, right, but I wonder, you know, about Phenac, and …”

She went quiet, then, harrumphing quietly. Her voice was as hoarse as her throat was dry, from all that time she’d spent cheering for him. _You were so cool_ , she’d said, all flushed with excitement and adrenaline, and Wes’ eyes had shifted from Evice to hers, sun-yellow and bright, like she was the only thing in the world worth taking in.

Now they were slanted once more, half-lidded and amber, and she didn’t know how to say goodbye. Agate, cool and dew-wet, was waiting for her, but was it still what she wanted?

Wes leant in, then, evaporating her thoughts of familiar waterfalls. His fingers had been lying limp inside her hand so far, but now the dark fabric of his gloves shifted and curled around hers. Less hand-holding, more hand-shake, but Rui’s face went warm nevertheless.

Wes approached, eyes on hers, that brilliant shade like a beam, and Rui’s whole face scrunched up, feeling overwhelmed and warm even in the shade of the stadium. His hair brushed the side of her face, and the metallic pop of the side-car’s door broke her out of her spell.

She gasped, realizing, and tightened her grip around his hand. At that moment, oh, she could’ve throttled him, she really could’ve, she was so mad! Heart beating a merciless rhythm, head swimming between things she wanted, but.

But Wes dropped her hand, hopping over to his seat with practiced ease, and the hiccuping purr of the bike grew into a full-fledged growl. The side-car’s open door beckoned her. More than that, so did his gaze, focused and serene, as he waited.

Over Wes’ shoulders, the white expanse of the desert blurred where it met the sky. Even standing in the shade was uncomfortable. Rui remembered she had stashed sunscreen under the seat, and that they’d need water, and what was her grandfather going to think?

And yet, this was the closest thing she’d get to an invitation, and the closest thing to what she wanted. So she huffed, still half-embarrassed, and took off her jacket, stretching it out over the wall of the sidecar. Butt-first, legs over the fabric, and a cheeky smile.

Wes replied with one of his own, mouth tipping more to one side, and waited for her to settle before revving the engine. A calm, layered expression. A home, maybe, if he went on letting her make him one.

“Where to, then?” Rui asked, raising her voice above the engine.

“To wherever we want,” he promised, and stepped on the pedal before she could marvel at the sound of his voice.


End file.
